What is the attraction of nurse training as a model for professional education? An analysis of field and habitus in the construction of curricula for nurse, teacher and police officer training.

Abstract

‘Nurse training’ looks like the new ‘gold standard’ for educating public service professionals. The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, cites it for the restructuring of teacher training in the Education Bill now before Parliament; and the Home Office commissioned Neyroud Report (2011) is similarly motivated in recommending a new police training approach. With consultation on the latter now underway, legislation is expected in the next Parliament. This paper questions the rush to uniformity in professional education. ‘Uniformity’ assumes quality control through ownership of the relevant competences by an agency which then validates a syllabus for delivery by approved HE/ profession partners. The partnership implies a value-free, technical delivery-vehicle, independent of the historical and cultural forces structuring professional fields. Our research was based on a pilot study of interviews with nurse, teacher and police educators. The aim was to understand the part lecturers play in the construction of professional curricula. We use the concept of ‘field’ to model the interplay of academy and profession influences; and the concept of ‘habitus’ to understand lecturers’ participation within it. We suggest HE partnerships are characterised by field structures constituted by idiosyncratic professional demands for education and training, and the specific historical and cultural influences of the contributing institutions. Professional curricula are the product of lecturers positioning themselves within those institutional fields. There is little precision in any formulation for training, i.e. its ability to produce intended outcomes. It is not the form per se which produces the practitioner, thus policy makers cannot anticipate how a nursing approach will work for teaching or policing. The curriculum is produced by complex and unpredictable interactions between habitus and field; tinkering with it may have unexpected consequences – and this includes the loss of what we already think is good.